Chapter 28: Red (Part 2)

The City of Townsville. Outskirts. Cult of His Arm Compound.

13 FEB (Monday) 1989. 1609.

There were explosions everywhere. Fire burning. People were shouting over the rattle of machinegun fire and the piercing report of other gunshots.

Bubbles had been separated from her sisters in the ensuing conflict. Though she had hoped that the cultists would just turn themselves in like good people, they were anything but good people. She and her sisters had immediately dived into combat the moment they saw guns raised with ill intent after the cult speaker had declined to surrender to the police and USDO.

Mullens had gotten into cover quickly – thankfully. She didn't want to see him hurt, as the last time was enough. Stanley Talker had sprinted forward to join them in combat. She was concerned at first, but he'd turned out to be just as impervious to bullets as they were.

Bubbles remembered how exactly it had happened, despite the traumatic turn of events. Mullens had been negotiating with a cult speaker – who wasn't the same cult leader who had assailed them in the Silver Age Cineplex…

"You see this paper? I'm here to search your premises, so if you'd cooperate with me and get all your junkies and bird-brained wizard-wannabes out here, I'd be much obliged," Mullens had demanded of the cult speaker in his usual, rough fashion as he stuck a warrant in her face.

The cult speaker was a tall woman, about the same height as Mullens. She appeared attractive and would have looked better had it not been her sunken cheeks and eyes and pale face. Covered in a red cloak, she promised only danger, not titillation, unlike some other members of her cult. Her eyes and sharp teeth gave the impression of a predatory creature. Or a vampire.

She wasn't alone. The compound was huge, and it used to be a farm, now converted for residency and cult worship. In the empty, untilled field before the manor, there were several campfires and the cultist guards surrounding them rose from their seats, picking up their firearms. In the manor, there were red-robed cultists at every window, each clutching one type of firearm or another. Bubbles was shaken by how many shotguns were between them, and could only think about using the fairy godmother's magic.

"You wish that we assent to your will?" The cult speaker laughed. "We 'submit' only to insects such as you only if it benefits us. No – we give in only to Him. So allow me to put to you a counter-offer: you will join us or leave. This offer extends to the four of you especially, Blossom, Bubbles, Buttercup and… Stanley Talker. The master would be pleased to have his fellow shadow-kin on his side…"

What she said had made the talking dog growl aggressively, as if ready to bite and strike at any moment.

"Who is this 'master' even?" Blossom asked aloud, annoyed at how the cult was keeping their apparent 'leader' a secret. Why couldn't she be honest just like everybody else? The vampire lady in red turned to Blossom.

"He is a being of great power, dear Blossom," the cult speaker divulged. "Same as you, and He desires to transform this world in His image, and bring about a new paradise for us all. Join Him, Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup… and Stanley – it is only fitting, for the four of you are the same as Him."

"But your friends attacked us…" Bubbles asserted shyly. "It's not very nice…"

"Yeah, why should we join you and your 'master' if you've been hurting my friends?" Blossom said, still unsure of what 'master' meant.

"Friends? You call these insignificant blanks your friends?" the vampire-like speaker said condescendingly, and Blossom and Bubbles didn't like that. They frowned at her. Buttercup, too – she could always use a few more heads to smash, whether they were voluntary or involuntary. "They bred you in captivity like livestock, put you in these laughable vessels that they would call 'cute' and 'friendly'. They've enslaved you and made you do their bidding. They've forced you to adopt their primitive and meaningless ways - and you call them your friends!?"

"Okay, enough of this mumbo jumbo," Detective Mullens dismissed the cult speaker's offer brashly. "I'm giving you one more chance. You see that army behind me?" Mullens pointed with his thumb behind him, over his shoulder. Police officers and USDO soldiers, supported by humvees with machinegun mounts and grenade launchers, were arrayed against the cult compound. "They're itching to bust your place up, maybe even plug a few of you crazies with lead. It'd go a lot more peaceful-like if you surrender now."

"There will be no surrender unless it's to Him! You can't stop the inevitable!" the cult speaker screeched without warning, her eyes glowing bright red, shocking everyone in Mullens' parley party. From within her red robe, an arm shot out, an old pistol in her hand. Blossom, who was closest, reacted the fastest, flying straight into her and tackling her to the ground and pinning her pistol arm to the ground.

Gunshots rang out. Mullens dived into a group of gnarly trees nearby after firing a couple of shotgun blasts on the move, putting down one of the more aggressive cultists. Bubbles and Buttercup crouched low on the ground, one terrified while the other pumped and ready, as they waited for Blossom's direction. Stanley Talker kept himself prone, ready to pounce as he growled.

Cultists were running towards them, shotguns and rifles and SMGs blazing.

"This is Mullens, begin the assault now, now, NOW!" the detective bellowed into his radio as he scrambled into a better cover position behind a tree while a bullet grazed his arm while he was down.

"Buttercup, with me to the left!" Blossom ordered quickly after punching out the cult speaker. She was a tough one and needed several blows before she finally fell unconscious. A sniper bullet slammed into her skull as she turned to Bubbles, knocking her on her butt. Nevertheless, she carried on despite the pain and eyes misting: "Bubbles, take the right! Go!"

"But- I can't do it on my own!" Bubbles whined, halting the Girls' counter-attack singlehandedly.

"Just use your new power, dummy!" Buttercup scolded.

"I'll help you as soon as I can, now go!" Blossom instructed, and without waiting for Bubbles' reply, she plowed straight at the group of cultists she was targeting, alongside Buttercup. Still caught in a dilemma between fighting clean or under the influence of the fairy godmother's drugs, Bubbles was only forced into action by the sound of Buttercup's battlecry and gunshots flying in her direction, bouncing off her Kevlar armguard as she shielded her face.

Not wanting to fail her sisters once more, she kicked herself up into a high floating position and flew at her targets, realizing too late that Blossom had assigned her a group that wasn't small.

Several gunshots tested her resolve. It was almost whittled down to nothing by several shotgun blasts – without the drug, her old fears were easily as damaging as Duranium bullets.

There was something wrong with the cultists. Their eyes were red, some dull, others were glowing… reminding her of her own eyes when she took the fairy godmother's magic.

Winding up a half-hearted punch, Bubbles was nonetheless able to floor one of them. She immediately felt another clubbing her on the back with a shotgun stock. The blow hurt far more than usual - which was almost paralyzing. Twisting around, she grabbed the shotgun, pulled it out of the cultist shotgunner's hands and broke the weapon in two with her knee – oh, how she hated those infernal weapons! But turning to another cultist, she was too slow to react to another cultist pointing his shotgun directly to her face and pulling the trigger. Pain exploded in her face as she lost control and dropped to the ground, her last flash of thought being regret that she hadn't drugged herself with the magic and her sisters would hate her for it.

At the same time, Stanley Talker had taken it upon himself to take down some of the more isolated cultists to protect Mister Mullens. Sprinting forward, he launched himself at a pistol-wielding cultist, knocking him down before biting him in the wrist to get him to let go of his weapon. However, even when he did, the talking dog had no way to follow up on his disarming attack. A rifle slug, in the meantime, had slammed against a side of his body, penetrating his canine Kevlar jacket. It did nothing - being a recipient of Chemical W, he was almost as resistant to bullets as the Girls.

Taking advantage of his enhanced strength, Stanley dragged the downed, screaming cultist by his bleeding wrist, and on surging forward, threw him at the nearby rifle-armed cultist, knocking him down with his own fellow new age believer. While the second man was down, the talking dog sprinted towards him, biting him in the arm as well.

Blossom and Buttercup were quickly putting down their group of cultists. But something was different. Something was wrong. After punching one cultist in the side of the neck, she expected her to be knocked out, as the rest of the criminals she faced usually did. Instead, the cultist had gotten back up and put pistol shots in her back while she had moved on to someone else.

Buttercup had noticed the same thing – despite putting a blow in a cultist's chest and hearing some cracks from the force she was putting in her punch, and throwing him several yards away, he'd gotten back up as if he'd just tripped and went back to business as usual, pulling out some kind of machete to re-enter the fray.

"What is with these people!?" Buttercup yelled as she pushed aside another cultist's shotgun before driving a foot in between his chest and stomach. She followed that up with a drop-kick to his head, knowing that they were harder to knock out.

The police and USDO forces were lined up behind trees, stone fences and vehicles - as the Girls were in the way, they had started trading shots with cultist shooters in the manor instead. Machinegun fire peppered the windows as rifle-armed SWAT officers and USDO soldiers picked off targets at the windows. Grenade launchers mounted on humvees fired smoke grenades in a high arc, which landed yards before the manor and exploded in clouds of smoke, blocking the view of most of the cultists at the first-floor windows. This was followed up by explosives, launched at more remote corners of the field to take out the snipers there.

The cultists fought back with their own long-arms. Combatants fell on both sides. But the cultists were something else entirely - somehow, even without the same protection and training as the law enforcers, they were entirely unafraid of the firepower the police and USDO were putting out. Cultists who were gunned down would get back up again to continue their zealous struggle. Even those who had lost an arm or a leg had continued fighting.

The battle, however, was not confined to a frontal assault. Mullens had arranged for some men to raid the compound from the back and sides. It was meant to be a surprise, but the sound of distant gunshots and shouts meant that they were prepared for it.

"Just- Hit them harder!" Blossom yelled as she strained to keep the eight or so cultists she was fighting against under control as well. She had been firing her infrared eye beam at point-blank range at them, strong enough to knock out adult human beings, but it was no longer enough. As she struck down a few, only to be beset by several more, those few would get back up again.

After getting peppered with a burst of SMG shots, she'd began searing them with greater heat, enough to burn their robes and injure them - it'd saddened her that she had to resort to such harsher measures, but it was the only way.

The cultists, however, weren't deterred. Some were even wearing expressions which were a mix of grimaces and smiles as if the pain was a pleasure, to be sought out, and to be struck down was an achievement.

But Blossom's desperate measures were yielding fruit. The cultists she burned did not get up. Things were still getting hotter, however - she heard Bubbles screaming not far away, and looking over at the group she was supposed to take down, she found a most terrifying sight: Bubbles was surrounded by cultists, who had resorted to the brutal and barbaric use of bare fists, feet and gun stocks to pummel and bash her. They were all over her, and Blossom couldn't even see her sister in that forest of frenzied red-eyes and ill-meaning limbs.

The leader of The Three flew immediately towards them to aid her sister, bowling into them like a cannonball, sending cultists flying everywhere. It was only then did she got a look at Bubbles - and she looked haggard, with her vest askew and her uniform torn in places, probably from the cultists clawing at her. Bruises were actually starting to form on her face, proof that the cultists weren't quite normal. Somehow, they were stronger than the usual bad guys they were facing.

"Are you okay, Bubbles?" Blossom asked urgently as she pulled her sister up to her feet.

"I'm sorry…" Bubbles mewled, unable to even look her as she clutched her arm.

"Why aren't you using your new power?" Blossom asked. Mad screams coming closer to the both of them ensured that she wouldn't get an answer, however. Both Girls turned to the source and saw a topless, barefooted man clothed only in cargo pants charging at them, and he was strapped with blocks of explosives on his chest, a detonator in one hand.

Detective Mullens had tried to work around the Girls and shoot him down, but the suicide bomber continued screaming his way towards the Girls even with a few shotgun pellets to the stomach. The cultists of a saner variety all around them fled as the suicide bomber got close enough, and promptly detonated his payload before the Girls knew to react properly. Blossom and Bubbles were sent flying in different directions. Blossom backward, while Bubbles had crashed through a stone wall separating different fields.

Blossom, with her uniform on fire, was rolling on the snowy ground, stopping only after a distance. With her ears ringing and vision a blur, she saw her cultist opponents rearranging their positions, putting themselves behind cover to conduct conventional warfare against her police and USDO friends. In the distance, Buttercup had stubbornly continued the fight solo, having graduated to firing her newfangled laser beam at her equally stubborn enemies. Straining her eyes, Blossom was touched that she had avoided killing anyone - opting instead to reduce the strength of her beams such that it was enough to tear skin and cause bleeding, but not sever limbs and kill.

Buttercup would sweep her laser eyebeam across multiple enemies at once, hurting them as well as putting enough fear in them to push them back. But she was getting tired - panting, and sweating and reduced to standing rather than hovering. It was a new power, which meant that it was harder to use.

Sensing that Buttercup needed her help, Blossom flew in her direction, firing her own eye beams, adding burns to her enemies' wounds besides laser cuts. But she, too, sensed that she was beginning to tire from her excessive use of enhanced abilities.

And that was how Bubbles had ended up separated from her sisters. Getting up with her ears ringing and her vision blurred, like Blossom, she sat behind the stone wall and leaned on it, badly shaken and terrified. The fear felt incredibly raw, worse than before. It was outright disabling. Despite the cold, she found herself sweating profusely, her sweat turning into crystals on her skin.

It was happening all over again. History was repeating itself. Soon, she heard her sisters screaming - in pain and in fear. Something had bested them, and she was powerless to stop it.

Unless.

There was no other way. Miss Keane and Mister Mullens were right. She stared into the distance as she shuddered in pain while taking a deep breath. And in the distance, on a knoll, was the fairy godmother standing among some trees, visible from her dress and wings. She saw her nodding her. The fairy godmother knew all along - Bubbles surmised - that she needed her magic.

Reaching into her leftmost magazine pouch, Bubbles pulled out a metal syringe with 'His Secret 2.0' written on it. Pushing her Kevlar arm guard out of the way and tapping on her forearm, near the crook of her elbow, she found a vein and promptly jabbed herself with the needle and depressed the plunger.

She felt her blood boil almost immediately as she hid her face behind her hands, both ashamed to show even the trees and vegetation what she did, and just as regretful of the expression on her face as it changed to one of excitement and elation as pure, concentrated pleasure washed over her. The pain inflicted upon her became a thing of the past. Fear no longer held sway in her heart. Anger began rising in her as she remembered what the cultists had done to her, and what they were doing to her sisters. That anger became rage, and as she got to her knees, taking in the addictive sensations that dispelled all worries in her, she turned that rage into destruction as she stood up and punched out the stone wall she had been leaning on, completely blowing up that section of the old masonry.

The moment she did, several cultists had turned to her, their eyes shining equally as hellish red as hers. Not all of them were frightened. Some smiled as if welcoming relatives into their homes. All of them shot at her nonetheless. Ignoring shotgun pellets and pistol rounds, Bubbles zipped forward to the nearest cultist with a crazed screech before killing him with a single swipe of her fingernails, opening up windpipe, arteries, and veins. The fingers of her right glove were torn because of it.

Another shotgun blast informed her of who to slaughter next. She launched herself into a flying kick at him, connecting with his upper arm within a second, sending him flying to the ground and tumbling. The cultist had suffered it with an odd, masochistic laugh, despite his shattered shoulder and pulverized upper arm. Bubbles silenced him by following his tumble, landing next to him and stomping on his neck, completely flattening it with blood splattering underneath as if she had stepped on a fruit.

A third cultist, the frightened one, started running. Bubbles launched herself into her, fist-first, breaking the cultist lady's spine in two, who dropped to the ground like a broken twig, wailing in pain. Bubbles touched down, tilting her head as she observed the result of her artwork. She thought the lady looked funny that way and laughed maniacally.

"You look funny!" Bubbles laughed as the broken lady continued to scream.

But the screams of her sisters, despite her dosage of His Secret 2.0, took precedence, not that she'd remembered her sisters after she began ripping at her enemies under the influence of the fairy godmother's magic.

Bubbles searched the field for her sisters. They were surrounded by cultists, some writhing in pain on the floor, slick and smooth with snow melted and refrozen as ice, some not moving at all.

Blossom and Buttercup were being assailed by a hulking, topless man in a jawless mask, wielding a giant axe that shimmered faintly in all sorts of colors. There was also a woman wielding dual swords of the same metal, covered only by a cloak, and as it fluttered, it could be seen that she was barefooted and naked underneath. Several other cultists of various eccentricities in their gear and cult uniform were coming. Her sisters were bloodied – the blades the cult wielded were Duranium. They were barely holding their own with the police and USDO still exchanging shots with the snipers in the manor, afraid to intervene on the Girls' behalf because they were in melee with the strangest of the cultists, their champions.

Bubbles didn't care – all she saw were more bodies to rip and tear, more people to make scream and beg. Flying to the cultic axeman, he delivered a fly-by punch to his cheek. The axeman fell to the floor on one knee.

"Bubbles!" Blossom and Buttercup shouted gladly in unison. Bubbles did not reply and instead continued counter-attacking the axeman. It didn't take long for either Girls to notice the change in their sister's eye color, and they each gasped their own surprise and fear when they did.

Bubbles delivered another right hook to the axeman's jaw before he could recover. There was an audible crack. Yellowish-brown teeth were scattered on white snow, trailed by the maroon of blood.

The axeman swung his weapon upwards at Bubbles, only for her to chop the handle of the axe in two. She finished him off with a kick to his mouth, further causing ripples of cracks. He crashed into the ground after that - alive or dead, no one knew, not even Bubbles - and Bubbles cared only about who she could hurt next.

"Bubbles, look out!" Blossom warned her sister but it was too late – neither was she, weakened by injury, fast enough to intervene. The Twin-swords cultist had swung both her swords at Bubbles, slicing her in the arm before Blossom could tackle her to the ground.

Buttercup, in the meantime, had to fight on against another cultist with what appeared to be a Duranium claymore when more of them had entered the fray. The cultist swung his large two-handed sword at her despite her laser, slicing her in the cheek and giving her a Glasgow smile.

"Not the face, you dung!" Buttercup shouted and fired a stronger laser in response, shearing the cultist down to the bone in his arm and chest before tackling him and while she straddled him, punched him in the face, scattering yet more teeth for her trophy collection.

Blossom backed away from Twin-Swords, looking over at Bubbles as she was more concerned about her sister.

"Bubbles! You're hurt!" Blossom gasped, flying over to her BeXerked sister to do something – anything to help, only to be pushed roughly to the ground by an out-of-control Bubbles who snarled at Twin-Swords, who was just getting up.

Bubbles charged the woman in a cloak with reckless abandon, who performed a scissor-strike with both her swords. The drug-crazed little girl intercepted both blades with her forearms and pushing it against the lady, threw her off-balance and pinned the cultist down with her back to the snow and pressing the flat side of her blades against her throat. With both her arms occupied, Bubbles headbutted the cultist instead, which stunned her hard enough for her to let go of her twin swords. Straddling the woman, she began punching her in the face repeatedly, and there was a sickening crack every time she hit the woman. Blood had covered Bubbles' gloved knuckles.

"Bubbles! No! You'll kill her!" Blossom shouted, unable to believe that Bubbles had gone the Buttercup path. Flying to her, she took Bubbles by the arms from behind, only for her to throw her off.

"Leave me alone before I kill you too!" Bubbles screamed without thought at Blossom. The hostility and rage in Bubbles' face, the way it was scrounged up in pure fury and hatred - how red those eyes were - had shocked Blossom beyond words.

But she had to try to stop Bubbles. She was the leader, after all. Grabbing her by the arm before she could continue her work and kill Twin-Swords, she tried to restrain her, only for Bubbles to twist around and punch her in the mouth.

Blossom fell back, cupping her mouth with both her hands, writhing on the ground as she felt as if her teeth might have all fallen out. For one insane moment, she thought this to be a reality, until she felt, gently, that her teeth were still in place if hurting. But on withdrawing her hands, she saw that they were covered in blood. She broke into a panicked sob when she realized that her sweetest sister had injured her intentionally.

And she was standing over her, those hellish red eyes staring down at her, such that Blossom actually believed that Bubbles might make good on her words and kill her. For the first time in her short life, Blossom was actually frightened of Bubbles - and she had previously been one of the most harmless people she had ever known, despite her enhanced abilities.

Bubbles stood over Blossom, her hands clenched into tight fists that her knuckles were cracking. She looked unhinged.

"Bubbles, don't…" Blossom begged as she cringed away from her. Bubbles' hellish red eyes searched her pink eyes. If there was any restraint left in the blond little girl, it was like thin ice, threatening to break at the slightest provocation. The sadistic smile on Bubbles' face wasn't particularly encouraging.

But before anything could happen, a sniper bullet had bounced off of the back of Bubbles' skull, which caused her to turn around and charge back into battle.

"Woah! What did she do to you!?" Buttercup, who was covering her Glasgow smile with a hand, had only just noticed Blossom as she was busy fending off more cultists - having only just managed to gain the upper hand against several swords or machete-wielding red robes and a few gunners.

"We- we have to follow Bubbles-" Blossom mumbled as she tried to speak with her teeth still so tender. Off in the distance, Bubbles had continued her rampage - hurling herself into a group of three rifle-armed cultists before breaking both legs of one, punching another so hard in the stomach that he was sent flying numerous yards away and slashing and puncturing another with her nails.

It seemed as though Bubbles had gone off the deep end, and was beyond hope, even far beyond the evil Buttercup was capable of committing. But there was something Blossom noticed - the men she was hurting were still writhing on the ground. They were still alive. Had she gotten through to her? Through that thick, red haze of rage and hatred? Blossom could only hope that Bubbles was pulling back her punches.

And just as Blossom sprung after Bubbles with Buttercup next to her, Bubbles had launched herself into another group of cultists in another field - the last group, actually - before slamming into one of them, knocking him into a tree. She proceeded to kick another in the face, breaking nose and teeth. The last man standing, whose eyes shone red and thus was pretty strong, had managed to grab Bubbles from behind and perform an arm choke. Bubbles, however, was able to wriggle around in his grasp, slippery as any little kid tend to be. When her arms were still restrained, she lunged at the man and bit him in the neck before tearing a chunk of flesh out with her teeth alone.

The man screamed - screamed like something never to be expected from a well-ripped overzealous cultist. Blood poured out of his neck, coloring his red robes redder - Bubbles was unfazed as if it was just like taking a warm shower. Licking her lips, Bubbles continued flying towards the manor.

Blossom and Buttercup had seen it all. Giving that man a bite in the neck was a whole new level of depravity altogether. And did Bubbles just drink some of that man's blood? The pink and green Girls were shocked to the point of non-action, to the point where they were unsure if they'd want to be anywhere near their sister while she was still using her new BerXerker power.

Bubbles barrelled through the Manor's front door alone, her mouth and chin and fingers dripping with blood, sending cultic men and women scrambling away in fear, escaping from whatever direction that would put any appreciable distance between them and the crazed little girl. Few stood and fight.

A red-robed woman at the foot of a wooden flight of stairs was shooting an old Grease Gun submachine gun at her. A couple of men at the corridor beside the stairs were letting off shots with bolt-action rifles. They weren't even the toughest the cult had to offer - Bubbles had long crippled or killed them outside.

Zipping towards the woman, Bubbles parried her SMG before smashing her through the stairs, breaking her back. Blossom's plea for mercy was all the way at the back of her mind - blood, violence, anger, and hatred were her only preoccupations with the fairy godmother's blessing.

Stealing the Grease Gun from the cultic woman, Bubbles unloaded it one-handed at the other two cultists, having all but forgotten Blossom's words within seconds. She didn't stop with them. She continued firing when she saw a few cultists running away towards the end of the corridor. Bodies were hitting the floor at an alarming rate.

And when the Grease Gun was out of bullets, Bubbles slapped at it as if it was some cheap toy.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid!" she screamed madly as she pounded at the Grease Gun before breaking it in two and tossing it aside, annoyed at the limitations of the toy. Unslinging her own MP5, which she had neglected to use for so long because of her single-minded pursuit of personal violence, she continued to terrorize the cultists, giggling madly as she did…